Persecution Of Anarchists

IN A country State-owned and controlled as
completely as Russia it is almost impossible to live without
the "grace" of the Government. However, I was
determined to make the attempt. I would accept nothing, not
even bread rations, from the hands stained with the blood of
the brave Kronstadt sailors. Fortunately, I had some clothing
left me by an American friend; it could be exchanged for
provisions. I had also received some money from my own people
in the United States. That would enable me to live for some
time.

In Moscow I procured a small room formerly occupied by
the daughter of Peter Kropotkin. From that day on I lived
like thousands of other Russians, carrying water, chopping
wood, washing and cooking, all in my little room. But I felt
freer and better for it.

The new economic policy turned Moscow into a vast market
place. Trade became the new religion. Shops and stores sprang
up overnight, mysteriously stacked with delicacies Russia had
not seen for years. Large quantities of butter, cheese, and
meat were displayed for sale; pastry, rare fruit, and sweets
of every variety were to be purchased. In the building of the
First House of the Soviet one of the biggest pastry shops had
been opened. Men, women, and children with pinched faces and
hungry eyes stood about gazing into the windows and
discussing the great miracle: what was but yesterday
considered a heinous offence was now flaunted before them in
an open and legal manner. I overheard a Red soldier say:
"Is this what we made the Revolution for? For this our
comrades had to die ?" The slogan, " Rob the
robbers," was now turned into "Respect the
robbers," and again was proclaimed the sanctity of
private property.

Russia was thus gradually resurrecting the social
conditions that the great Revolution had come to destroy. But
the return to capitalism in no way changed the Bolshevik
attitude toward the Left elements. Bourgeois ideas and
practices were to be encouraged to develop the industrial
life of Russia, but revolutionary tendencies were to be
suppressed as before.

In connection with Kronstadt a general raid on Anarchists
took place in Petrograd and Moscow. The prisons were filled
with these victims. Almost every known Anarchist had been
arrested; and the Anarchist book stores and printing offices
of "Golos Truda" in both cities were sealed by the
Tcheka. The Ukrainian Anarchists who had been arrested on the
eve of the Kharkov Conference (though guaranteed immunity by
the Bolsheviki under the Makhno agreement) were brought to
Moscow and placed in the Butyrki; that Romanov dungeon was
again serving its old purpose-even holding some of the
revolutionists incarcerated there before. Presently it became
known that the politicals in the Butyrki had been brutally
assaulted by the Tcheka and secretly deported to unknown
parts. Moscow was much agitated by this resurrection of the
worst prison methods of Tsarism. Interpellation on the
subject was made in the Moscow Soviet, the indignation of the
deputies being so great that the Tcheka representative was
shouted off the platform. Several Moscow Anarchist groups
sent a vigorous protest to the authorities, which document I
quote in part:

The undersigned Anarcho-syndicalist organizations after
having carefully considered the situation that has developed
lately in connection with the persecution of Anarchists in
Moscow, Petrograd, Kharkov, and other cities of Russia and
the Ukraine, including the forcible suppression of Anarchist
organizations, clubs, publications, etc., hereby express
their decisive and energetic protest against this despotic
crushing of not only every agitational and propagandistic
activity, but even of all purely cultural work by Anarchist
organizations.

The systematic man-hunt of Anarchists in general, and of
Anarcho-syndicalists in particular, with the result that
every prison and jail in Soviet Russia is filled with our
comrades, fully coincided in time and spirit with Lenin's
speech at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party.
On that occasion Lenin announced that the most merciless war
must be declared against what he termed "petty bourgeois
Anarchist elements" which, according to him, are
developing even within the Communist Party itself owing to
the "anarcho-syndicalist tendencies of the Labour
Opposition." On that very day that Lenin made the above
statements numbers of Anarchists were arrested all over the
country, without the least cause or explanation. No charges
have been preferred against any one of the imprisoned
comrades, though some of them have already been condemned to
long terms without hearing or trial, and in their absence.
The conditions of their imprisonment are exceptionally vile
and brutal. Thus one of the arrested, Comrade Maximov, after
numerous vain protests against the incredibly unhygienic
conditions in which he was forced to exist, was driven to the
only means of protest left him-a hunger strike. Another
comrade, Yarchuk, released after an imprisonment of six days,
was soon rearrested without any charges being preferred
against him on either occasion.

According to reliable information received by us, some of
the arrested Anarchists are being sent to the prisons of
Samara, far away from home and friends, and thus deprived of
what little comradely assistance they might have been able to
receive nearer home. A number of other comrades have been
forced by the terrible conditions of their imprisonment to
declare a hunger strike. One of them, after hungering twelve
days, became dangerously ill.

Even physical violence is practised upon our comrades in
prison. The statement of the Anarchists in the Butyrki prison
in Moscow, signed by thirty-eight comrades, and sent to the
Executive Committee of the All-Russian Extraordinary
Commission on March 16th, contains, among other things, the
following statement: "On March 15th Comrade T. Kashirin
was brutally attacked and beaten in the prison of the Special
Department of the Extraordinary Commission by your agent Mago
and assistants, in the presence of the prison warden
Dookiss."

Besides the wholesale arrests of and the physical
violence toward our comrades, the Government is waging
systematic war against our educational work. It has closed a
number of our clubs, as well as the Moscow office of the
publishing establishment of the Anarcho-syndicalist
organization Golos Truda. A similar man-hunt took
place in Petrograd on March 15th. Numbers of Anarchists were
arrested, without cause, the printing house of Golos
Truda was closed, and its workers imprisoned. No charges
have been preferred against the arrested comrades, all of
whom are still in prison.

These unbearably autocratic tactics of the Government
towards the Anarchists are unquestionably the result of the
general policy of the Bolshevik State in the exclusive
control of the Communist Party in regard to Anarchism,
Syndicalism, and their adherents.

This state of affairs is forcing us to raise our voices
in loud protest against the panicky and brutal suppression of
the Anarchist movement by the Bolshevik Government. Here in
Russia our voice is weak. It is stifled. The policy of the
ruling Communist Party is designed to destroy absolutely
every possibility or effort of Anarchist activity or
propaganda. The Anarchists of Russia are thus forced into the
condition of a complete moral hunger strike, for the
Government is depriving us of the possibility to carry out
even those plans and projects which it itself only recently
promised to aid.

Realizing more clearly than ever before the truth of our
Anarchist ideal and the imperative need of its application to
life we are convinced that the revolutionary proletariat of
the world is with us.

After the February Revolution Russian Anarchists returned
from every land to Russia to devote themselves to
revolutionary activity. The Bolsheviki had adopted the
Anarchist slogan, "The factories to the workers, the
land to the peasants," and thereby won the sympathies of
the Anarchists. The latter saw in the Bolsheviki the
spokesmen of social and economic emancipation, and joined
forces with them.

Through the October period the Anarchists worked hand in
hand with the Communists and fought with them side by side in
the defense of the Revolution. Then came the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty, which many Anarchists considered a betrayal of the
Revolution. It was the first warning for them that all was
not well with the Bolsheviki. But Russia was still exposed to
foreign intervention, and the Anarchists felt that they must
continue together to fight the common enemy.

In April, 1918, came another blow. By order of Trotsky
the Anarchist headquarters in Moscow were attacked with
artillery, some Anarchists wounded, a large number arrested,
and all Anarchist activities "liquidated." This
entirely unexpected outrage served to further to alienate the
Anarchists from the ruling Party. Still the majority of them
remained with the Bolsheviki: they felt that, in spite of
internal persecution to turn against the existing regime was
to work into the hands of the counter-revolutionary forces.
The Anarchists participated in every social, educational, and
economic effort; they worked even in the military departments
to aid Russia. In the Red Guards, in the volunteer regiments,
and later in the Red Army; as organizers and managers of
factories and shops; as chiefs of the fuel bureaus; as
teachers-everywhere the Anarchists held difficult and
responsible positions. Out of their ranks came some of the
ablest men who worked in the foreign office with Tchicherin
and Kharakan, in the various press bureaus, as Bolshevik
diplomatic representatives in Turkestan, Bokhara, and the Far
Eastern Republic. Throughout Russia the Anarchists worked
with and for the Bolsheviki in the belief that they were
advancing the cause of the Revolution. But the devotion and
zeal of the Anarchists in no way deterred the Communists from
relentlessly persecuting the Anarchist movement.

The peculiar general situation and the confusion of ideas
created in all revolutionary circles by the Bolshevik
experiment divided the Anarchist forces in Russia into
several factions, thereby weakening their effect upon the
course of the Revolution. There were a number of groups, each
striving separately and striving vainly against the
formidable machine which they themselves had helped to
create. In the dense political fog many lost their sense of
direction: they could not distinguish between the Bolsheviki
and the Revolution. In desperation some Anarchists were
driven to underground activities, even as they had been
during the regime of the Tsars. But such work was more
difficult and perilous under the new rulers and it also
opened the door to the sinister machinations of provocators.
The more mature Anarchist organizations, such as the
Nabat, in the Ukraina, Golos Truda in Petrograd
and Moscow, and the Voylni Trud group-the last two of
Anarcho-syndicalist tendency-continued their work openly, as
best they could.

Unfortunately, as was unavoidable under the
circumstances, some evil spirits had found entry into the
Anarchist ranks-debris washed ashore by the Revolutionary
tide. They were types to whom the Revolution meant only
destruction, occasionally even for personal advantage. They
engaged in shady pursuits and, when arrested and their lives
threatened, they often turned traitors and joined the Tcheka.
Particularly in Kharkov and Odessa thrived this poisonous
weed. The Anarchists at large were the first to take a stand
against this element. The Bolsheviki, always anxious to
secure the services of the Anarchist derelicts,
systematically perverted the facts. They maligned,
persecuted, and hounded the Anarchist movement as such. It
was this Communist treachery and despotism which resulted in
a bomb's being thrown during the session of the Moscow
Section of the Communist Party in September, 1919. It was an
act of protest, members of the various political tendencies
cooperating in it. The Anarchist organizations Golos
Truda and Voylni Trud in Moscow publicly expressed
their condemnation of such methods, but the Government
replied with reprisals against all Anarchists. Yet, in spite
of their bitter experiences and martyrdom under the Bolshevik
regime, most of the Anarchists clung tenaciously to the hand
that smote them. It needed the outrage upon Kronstadt to
rouse them from the hypnotic spell of the Bolshevik
superstition.

Power is corrupting, and Anarchists are no exception. It
must in truth be admitted that a certain Anarchist element
became demoralized by it; by far the largest majority
retained their integrity. Neither Bolshevik persecution nor
oft-attempted bribery of good position with all its special
privileges succeeded in alienating the great bulk of
Anarchists from their ideals. As a result they were
constantly harassed and incarcerated. Their existence in the
prisons was a continuous torture: in most of them still
obtained the old regime and only the collective struggle of
the politicals occasionally succeeded in compelling reforms
and improvements. Thus it required repeated
"obstructions" and hunger strikes in the Butyrki
before the authorities were forced to make concessions. The
politicals succeeded in establishing a sort of university,
organized lectures, and received visits and food parcels. But
the Tcheka frowned upon such "liberties." Suddenly,
without warning, an end was put to decent treatment; the
Butyrki was raided and the prisoners, numbering more than
400, and belonging to various revolutionary wings, were
forcibly taken from their cells and transferred to other
penal institutions. A message received at the time from one
of the victims, dated April 27th, reads:

Concentration Camp, Ryazan.

On the night of April 25th we were attacked by Red
soldiers and armed Tchekists and ordered to dress and get
ready to leave the Butyrki. Some of the politicals, fearing
that they were to be taken to execution, refused to go and
were terribly beaten. The women especially were maltreated,
some of them being dragged down the stairs by their hair.
Many have suffered serious injury. I myself was so badly
beaten that my whole body feels like one big sore. We were
taken out by force in our night-clothes and thrown into
wagons. The comrades in our group knew nothing of the
whereabouts of the rest of the politicals, including
Mensheviks, Social Revolutionists, Anarchists, and
Anarcho-syndicalists.

Ten of us, among them Fanya Baron, have been brought
here. Conditions in this prison are unbearable. No exercise,
no fresh air; food is scarce and filthy; everywhere awful
dirt, bedbugs, and lice. We mean to declare a hunger strike
for better treatment. We have just been told to get ready
with our things. They are going to send us away again. We do
not know where to.

[Signed] T.

Upon the circumstances of the Butyrki raid becoming known
the students of the Moscow University held a protest meeting
and passed resolutions condemnatory of the outrage. Thereupon
the student leaders were arrested and the University closed.
The non-resident students were ordered to leave Moscow within
three days on the pretext of lack of rations. The students
volunteered to give up their payok, but the Government
insisted on their quitting the capital. Later, when the
University was re-opened, Preobrazhensky, the Dean,
admonished the students to refrain from any political
expressions on pain of being expelled from the University.
Some of the arrested students were exiled, among them several
girl students, for the sole crime of being members of a
circle whose aim was to study the works of Kropotkin and
other Anarchist authors. The methods of the Tsar were
resurrected by his heirs to the throne in Bolshevik
Russia.

After the death of Peter Kropotkin his friends and
comrades decided to found a Kropotkin Museum in commemoration
of the great Anarchist teacher and in furtherance of his
ideas and ideals. I removed to Moscow to aid in the
organization of the proposed memorial, but before long the
Museum Committee concluded that for the time being the
project could not be realized. Everything being under State
monopoly nothing could be done without application to the
authorities. To accept Government aid would have been a
deliberate betrayal of the spirit of Kropotkin who throughout
his life consistently refused State assistance. Once when
Kropotkin was ill and in need, the Bolshevik Government
offered him a large sum for the right to publish his works.
Kropotkin refused. He was compelled to accept rations and
medical assistance when sick, but he would neither consent to
his works being published by the State nor accept any other
aid from it. The Kropotkin Museum Committee took the same
attitude. It accepted from the Moscow Soviet the house
Kropotkin had been born in, and which was to be turned into a
Kropotkin Museum; but it would ask the Government for nothing
more. The house at the time was occupied by a military
organization; it would require months to get it vacated and
then no means would be at hand to have it renovated. Some of
the Committee members felt that a Kropotkin Museum was out of
place in Bolshevik Russia as long as despotism was rampant
and the prisons filled with political dissenters.

While I was in Petrograd on a short visit, the Moscow
apartment in which I had a room was raided by the Tcheka. I
learned that the customary trap had been set and everyone
arrested who called at the place during the zassada. I
visited Ravitch to protest against such proceedings, telling
her that if the object was to take me into custody I was
prepared for it. Ravitch had heard nothing of the matter, but
promised to get in touch with Moscow. A few days later I was
informed that the Tchekists had been withdrawn from the
apartment and that the arrested friends were about to be
released. When I returned to my room some time later most of
them had been freed. At the same time a number of Anarchists
were arrested in various parts of the capital and no news of
their fate or of the cause of their arrest could be learned.
Several weeks later, on August 30th, the Moscow Izvestia
published the official report of the Veh-Tcheka concerning
"Anarchist banditism," announcing that ten
Anarchists had been shot as "bandits" without
hearing or trial.

It had become the established policy of the Bolshevik
Government to mask its barbaric procedure against Anarchists
with the uniform charge of banditism. This accusation was
made practically against all arrested Anarchists and
frequently even against sympathizers with the movement. A
very convenient method of getting rid of an undesirable
person: by it any one could be secretly executed and
buried.

Among the ten victims were two of the best known Russian
Anarchists, whose idealism and life-long devotion to the
cause of humanity had stood the test of Tsarist dungeons and
exile, and persecution and suffering in other countries. They
were Fanya Baron, who several months before had escaped from
the Ryazan prison, and Lev Tcherny who had spent many years
of his life in katorga and exile, under the old regime. The
Bolsheviki did not have the courage to say that they had shot
Lev Tcherny; in the list of the executed he appeared as
"Turchaninoff," which-though his real name-was
unfamiliar to some even of his closest friends. Tcherny was
known throughout Russia as a gifted poet and writer. In 1907
he had published an original work on "Associational
Anarchism," and since his return from Siberia in 1917 he
had enjoyed wide popularity among the workers of Moscow as a
lecturer and founder of the "Federation of Brain
Workers." He was a man of great gifts, tender and
sympathetic in all his relationships. No person could be
further from banditism.

The mother of Tcherny had repeatedly called at the Ossoby
Otdel (Special Department of the Tcheka) to learn the fate of
her son. Every time she was told to come next day; she would
then be permitted to see him. As established later, Tcherny
had already been shot when these promises were being made.
After his death the authorities refused to turn his body over
to his relatives or friends for burial. There were persistent
rumours that the Tcheka had not intended to execute Tcherny,
but that he died under torture.

Fanya Baron was of the type of Russian woman completely
consecrated to the cause of humanity. While in America she
gave all her spare time and a goodly part of her meagre
earnings in a factory to further Anarchist propaganda. Years
afterward, when I met her in Kharkov, her zeal and devotion
had become intensified by the persecution she and her
comrades had endured since their return to Russia. She
possessed unbounded courage and a generous spirit. She could
perform the most difficult task and deprive herself of the
last piece of bread with grace and utter selflessness. Under
harrowing conditions of travel, Fanya went up and down the
Ukraina to spread the Nabat, organize the workers and
peasants, or bring help and succour to her imprisoned
comrades. She was one of the victims of the Butyrki raid,
when she had been dragged by her hair and badly beaten. After
her escape from the Ryazan prison she tramped on foot to
Moscow, where she arrived in tatters and penniless. It was
her desperate condition which drove her to seek shelter with
her husband's brother, at whose house she was discovered by
the Tcheka. This big-hearted woman, who had served the Social
Revolution all her life, was done to death by the people who
pretended to be the advance guard of revolution. Not content
with the crime of killing Fanya Baron, the Soviet Government
put the stigma of banditism on the memory of their dead
victim.